05/25/2025
When I started, it was a quick update.
You know me by now - Sorry (but not really) that there are always so many things to tell you all about!
HEYYYYYY! Hi There! Yeah, it is almost the end of May and – Well, Here it the May newsletter – way too late to tell you about two really cool book events we helped host or the Open Mic, the Extra Noise Show we hosted or so many other things. Sorry. We do have Brian Kimmel and Melissa Slager’s books in the shop for you – and Brian’s have a special gift in each one!
Memorial Day is Monday and that means the Crusin’ Colby Car Show – we will be open 8am-3pm this year. Come by for your iced drink and hot coffee needs – we will have soup and sandwiches, our chips and cheese dip, etc for you – come by and sit in the shade a bit.
So What other news do I have to share? Popping the links in for more information, so look for the BLUE to tell you it is a live link.
First the yearly reminder – “The Best Of” voting is starting up again – the first one is the Seattle Times (https://www.bestinthepnw.com/) – and then the others will follow and you will be asked to vote daily, vote often, vote for your favorite – Yeah, we would love to win again but we won’t be asking you to vote with a lot of messages and posts. If you feel so inclined, we appreciate your vote. Both of the shops have been nominated, PNW for “Best place to buy a gift” and I can’t help but agree.
On a sad note, we will be saying “Goodbye” to our business intern, Alice, when she returns to France in a little over a week. What an experience to work with a young woman from outside your sphere who can look at your business with unprejudiced eyes. We are very grateful to have been asked to partake in this exchange opportunity. We will miss her quiet presence.
What else? Well, we have so many things coming up – it is a bit incredible that we put these all on the calendar.
Book Events First!
On the 8th of June we are hosting the release of a brand new NW hiking book – Hiking Island County by Ken Wilcox (https://www.facebook.com/share/1Bjw6ta212/) . Y’all already love his Snohomish County and Whatcom County hiking guides and now he is filling in the local trifecta with this latest. We are selling tickets to this to make sure we have enough - enough books, enough nibbles, enough space. Each ticket will get a drink of their choice, we will have a snack table set up for all, and you will go home with the brand-new Island County guide, too. So please consider buying a ticket and help Ken kick off his book release with a burst of sales. He will share for about one hour about local hiking opportunities, and he will take questions from the audience – so now is your chance to learn about the local hiking terrain! Can’t wait to learn what cool hikes have been hiding behind pull outs and badly marked trailheads!
On Monday the 9th is a “midnight release” party for “Bury our bones in the Midnight Soil” with signed copies by VE Schwab (https://www.facebook.com/share/16D3nEvRef/) . A book that spans centuries, continents and the lives of women who live the life of the undead. We are hosting an earlier version of a Midnight Release Party – using EST for midnight – but the party part will remain! (We just want to get home before 1:30am this time : ) So a SIGNED book, AND! The first 12 tickets purchased will get a cool button from the publisher – and we will have a sweet goody bag for you, too, with some gifts from us! I have to admit, I think I like a Vampire story that is built on women Vampires – be prepared for some Vampiric trivia and a few other activities lined up for you.
On the 13th of June– YES! THREE book events in ONE WEEK! – We are doing a bit of an unstructured release party – this one is a Pre-Order Pickup Party for "Confessions of a Grammar Queen" (https://www.facebook.com/share/1EVnXsPUJf/) and to have a little fun we are inviting you to come in 60s gear, or PINK (or Both!) to celebrate the story of the young book editor spreading her wings as she works towards her goal of being the very first woman chief editor for her publisher. We will have some editing fun and a short Trivia game on Women’s Writes…. Ooops Rights! We are creating a fun mocktail cocktail menu on theme with the book, providing classic 60s Hors de Oeuvres and each preorder will get a little gift bag with items from the publisher (For Preorders Only, you won’t get them if you purchase from the shelf later) and of course we have some special bits and pieces for you as well! The Trivia will be around 7pm, but the rest will be just a casual “Mocktail Party” of some good nibbles, drinks of your choice and a few fun activities. Ticket gets you a book and the goodies! Food is free!
On June 28th we have a very special book event. Trail of Compassion, in conjunction with Author, Jeannine Fosca, (https://www.facebook.com/share/1FEgKCUwAM/) the Snohomish County Health Department and Aids Project Snohomish to honor National HIV Testing Day. Jeannine will speak at 4pm about living HIV positive for 20 years and the SnoCo Health Dept will offer free HIV testing from 5- 6pm. She has asked us to offer some African dishes that she fell in love with while serving with the Peace Corps, so we will be serving Goat Pepper Soup as our daily soup – while supplies last that Saturday.
Later, at 6pm on the 28th, we will be hosting Esoteric Everett Noise show (https://www.instagram.com/p/DAWrXYXTqeu/) as we do every last Saturday of the Month.
Oh!
And the last Saturday of this month –May 31st - we are the PreFunc space for the poetry crawl that ChatroomsEvt (On IG) is hosting (https://www.instagram.com/p/DJ5BPg2zxYC/) . They will gather at Artisans by 5:30pm and then wander west to hit up the next spaces after a meet and greet with us! You can find the itinerary for the evening on their Instagram account. And at 6pm the Noise show starts!
You are all likely aware that June is Pride Month – and we stand with Pride to support our friends, family, neighbors, and employees for whom this is a month of great importance. Along that line, our VE Schwab event is on our Pride Calendar, as is Jeannine’s HIV event. In June we will have a lowkey showcase on June 21st hosted by my daughter Luin and some of her (and yours too) friends, El – our beloved past employee who is back in town - and Kara. (https://www.facebook.com/share/19ydppaFSL/) Both Luin and Kara are part of the local band Blue Wizard, as well as solo artists. It will be a great evening and will be a ‘pay what you can’. I am prejudiced, I know, but I am also right when I say that these three young people make amazing music that will speak to you. If you can come – do. Seriously. The music is… special.
We are hoping to do an evening event near the end of the month, celebrating LGBTQ lit but with all of these already on the calendar we just need to wrap up one or two before we plunge into another plan!! So stay aware. I likely won’t get another email out until July so news will come out on Social Media and if I am really with it, we might have flyers in the shop.
And THAT is something – Now for the rest of the news…
The 4th of July is the first Friday of the month and we have traditionally closed early. This year we are just going to close. The staff needs to rest up for something pretty big. Not just big, BIG, no…. HUGE! What were we thinking????? Aw, I can’t blame anyone else! It sounded so doable 6 months ago. It was ALL me. I said we could handle setting up an extra location for three days and host authors, and creators and…
What is it?
Everything Geek, GFWest at the Arena on July 18,19, and 20. (https://www.facebook.com/share/17tTZCwgpV/)
When they say Everything Geek, they mean EVERYTHING geek.
And we agreed to take on the bookstore and host the Quiet Space.
So, three of our busiest days of the year and I decided to add a second location and the need for more staff. Yup, that made sense!!!
For Everything Geek, GFWest we are bringing some NW National bestselling authors to our space, as well as hosting some workshops, presentations and activities for all ages. Low energy activities like coloring, sitting, listening, and staring will be available, too, for those who can get tapped out at these events. The space is huge and we will have some chairs overlooking the floor area available at most anytime of the day.
The ” Cloud City Bookstore” will be featuring a large collection of vintage SciFi/ Fantasy, as well as comic collections for such classics as Tumbleweed, Hagar the Horrible and many more. Mad Magazine books, spy novels… Seriously a huge collection of vintage books to thumb through as well as bringing local stars and a nice little book store of fresh and classic books for your perusal. We are currently posting information about the event on our FB and IG pages, and you can follow the event on FB and get all the updates. You can also reserve your literal seat for the workshops or presentations. While the space holds like 200 there are comfy seats for about 25.
This is a huge reach for us and we really hope that you will all come to see us and help us make all this extra work and worry worth it!
The café will be open for this whole GFW thing as well, and of course be open until 9pm for the Friday and Saturday. We will be your closest source of Non-Arena coffee and iced drinks if you are attending, so please stop by.
As for the rest of the summer? Well, I might be sleeping the end of July away, but we will still be hosting Noise Music for the last Saturday of each month and the Writers Salon for the first. Silent Book Club is the first Thursday - Lindsey likes getting a count ahead of time, so check in on their social account.
As we have the last two years, we will close for a stretch in August. We have some projects to work on – more boards have broken in the floor and we need to do something about the benches – and the staff needs to not be in the super hot space for the whole month of August. Right now it looks like we won’t be cancelling any activities except the Wednesday night art for the time that we are closed. The exact dates haven’t been decided but it will be in the middle of the month-ish.
Something to look forward to – Zan Fiskum will be performing in the café in September. Last time she was here with her band it was absolutely amazing! You might want to keep an eye out for that ticket.
I am so very sure I am forgetting to tell you something – but for now I would ask that you remember that small business can only be here to serve you if you keep us in your schedule. We could wish the economy was not being twisted into a corkscrew but it is. We will do our best to find the best ways to trim the fat and stay available to you all, but it is hard when the operation is as lean as ours to find any fat to trim. So, doing our best to be here for you and we are forever in your debt for making us your Third Space!
Thank you!!
The Ramsey's and the AmaZING Artisans Staff!
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